Work Plan

At the highest level, the work that is done to realize the Council of Coaches is divided into 8 Work Packages – working to achieve 7 key Milestones during the three year course of the project (September 2017 – August 2020).

Work Packages

The work plan of the Council of Coaches defines 9 Work Packages, as listed in the table below.

Milestones

The work plan for Council of Coaches defines 7 key Milestones, representing major intermediary achievements of the project. These milestones are listed and described below.

Milestone 1: Initial design and requirements (M6 – February, 2018)

The first project milestone has been achieved. In the first six months of the project, the consortium has worked on gathering user requirements, performed state of the art literature research and described existing technology platforms that will be used in the development of the Council of Coaches prototypes. In Work Package 2, a vision on how the project will adopt a Responsible Research and Innovation approach is layed out (D2.1) and initial stakeholder analysis results are reported (D2.2). In Work Package 3, a literature overview on behaviour change theories and methods was done, serving as input for the initial design of the system’s Knowledge Base (D3.1). Similarly, in Work Package 4, a state of the art overview was compiled on sensing and profiling techniques – leading to an initial design of the Holistic Behaviour Analysis Framework (D4.1). In Work Package 5, the Dialogue and Argumentation Framework design and background was compiled and reported in D5.1, while in Work Package 6 work has been done on describing existing frameworks for creating the Embodied Conversational Coaches that will form the main Human Computer Interaction element in the Council of Coaches (D6.1). In this same time period, the project has prepared its first living draft of the Data Management Plan (D1.2) and its Innovation Management Guidelines (D1.3).

Milestone 2: First Functional Prototype (M9 – May, 2018)

The second project milestone has been achieved. The first functional prototype of the Council of Coaches system is released as a working demonstrator that can be downloaded and run with a double-click. A video of the demonstrator was also published on the project’s YouTube channel. Is it amazing? Yes and no. Yes, because under the hood, major technical progress has been made in the integration of complex technical subsystems: the GRETA virtual agent platform of Sorbonne Universities and the ASAP virtual agent platform of the University of Twente communicate with each other and can both be instructed by the Dialogue Game Execution Platform from the University of Dundee. First steps are also made to integrate “couch specific” components: the knowledge base and holistic behavior analysis framework. On the other hand, this demonstrator will not impress any member of our target audience: the older adults with health related issues. We are aware of that. But for a three month development phase, much has been achieved. The next six months leading up to the second functional demonstrator and next project milestone will be devoted to technical improvements, but most importantly to creating an outstanding user experience for our end users.

Milestone 3: Second Functional Prototype (M15 – November, 2018)

The third project milestone has been achieved. The second functional prototype milestone consists of an update of what we now call “Technical Prototype” – the integration of GRETA/ASAP/DGEP/KB/HBAF (i.e. the agent platforms, dialogue system, knowledge base and sensor framework) and an online release of an actual “functional demonstrator” (demo.council-of-coaches.eu). This functional demonstrator is meant to be used by interaction-based experiments with older adult end-users. Whereas the technical demonstrator needs a powerful PC to run, and will arguably have many usability issues – the second functional demonstrator is less impressive, but simply works (even on your phone).

Milestone 4: Third Functional Prototype (M21 – May, 2019)

Delivery of the third software demonstrator.

Milestone 5: Technical Prototype (M27 – November, 2019)

Delivery of the complete autonomous Council of Coaches prototype.

Milestone 6: Start of Final Demonstration (M30 – February, 2020)

Ethical approvals obtained and start of recruitment for final demonstration.

Milestone 7: Final Reporting and Project End (M36 – August, 2020)

Final demonstration results documented, delivery of all project deliverables and end of project :(.